BOSTON — The departure of Rajon Rondo makes the Celtics a very different team — that much is not up for debate.
But despite the fact Boston’s captain and undisputed best player now plays his ball down in Dallas, Celtics coach Brad Stevens isn’t expecting to make any seismic changes to his game plan.
“I think the biggest thing is, (the trade) doesn’t change the system a whole lot,” Stevens said before Friday’s matchup with the Minnesota Timberwolves. “It might change some matchups defensively. You may play a little bit less high pick-and-roll in the near term until (new point guard Jameer Nelson) gets up to speed. You may play with a few less actions that were just for him or catered to him out of timeouts. But it’s not going to change the way generally we want to play, which is to continue to get the ball up the court and play with spacing and movement and together on offense.
“And then defensively, we’ve got to be even more locked in on now if we’re going to be the best team we can be we’ve got to be better defensively than we’ve been overall, because we’ve been pretty good in the last (few) weeks.”
Nelson is a new piece, coming over from the Mavericks on Thursday along with center Brandan Wright and Jae Crowder, but the point guard unit he joins has experience running the show. After all, Rondo missed the entire preseason with a broken hand, allowing Marcus Smart, Evan Turner and Phil Pressey to share ball-distribution duties for eight full games while the Celtics’ primary floor general watched from the sideline.
Stevens again was asked if any system changes were in store after his team dismantled the Timberwolves 114-98 in its first game after the trade, and the coach’s answer remained the same.
“None,” Stevens said. “None. The same roles that we had in the preseason. We were playing without him in the preseason, so I really haven’t had to communicate anything different to any of those guys.”
Thumbnail photo via Twitter/@BenjeeBallgame
